


The Galaxy We Wanted

by Nebulad



Series: Vesegara [3]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: "Meet the Family" spoilers, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 04:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10734060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: “I only wonder if I have been too subtle; I wasn’t sure what would make you uncomfortable and what wouldn’t, so I tried to temper myself. I wish to be direct, now.Angarandirect.”“Oh?” If he said something about her intelligence or beauty again, she was going to combust.“I want to kiss you.”She was going to combust.





	The Galaxy We Wanted

So many things about Jaal’s room were… normal. He might’ve liked to hear that— better yet, to see Amani’s quarters on the Tempest the way she liked them, rather than the morbidly tidy museum to her father she kept it as. Twenty-two years she’d spent avoiding him and resenting every minute trespass he made into her life, and yet she still couldn’t bring herself to live in her own ship. It was supposed to be _his._ She wasn’t supposed to be in this dead galaxy anyway; maybe her Alliance career was over, but she’d do anything so long as she could pay her rent every month. She could be teaching yoga to hanar or selling omnitools to elderly asari.

Then again, had she stayed behind she wouldn’t know what Jaal Ama Darav’s room looked like either. There were small victories, where she could take them.

She was wearing soft clothes for once, and sitting cross-legged on his bed while he showed her memories: a gun he’d taken apart and put back together so many times that he knew it without looking (a gift from one of his aunts), a plate (torn off of a Kett chestpiece, supposedly the first he’d killed, which he now handled with a look akin to sickness), dried flowers that he admitted he hadn’t been able to throw away from his time with Allia, and a carved stone bound to a short rope (a bracelet made by his father, too precious now to wear).

Amani liked his memories, and the way he handled the objects like they were the vessels for them. She’d never been that attached to physical items, never been the flower-pressing sort. Maybe she would try, for Jaal; as if his whole self could be contained in one of the blue blossoms that his cousins were growing outside. He had a different language for each of them too: the gun he handed indifferently, knowing that if he shattered it, he could fix it; the chestpiece chunk he visibly didn’t want to be touching, as if it were a spider instead of a piece of armour; the flowers were delicate considering the heavy memory they carried in their withered leaves, and he held them with the uncertainty that Allia inspired from him. The bracelet was handled like it was rigged to explode if it was jostled, but he couldn’t resist letting her examine it.

“Do humans have keepsakes?” he asked after everything had been replaced in the box. She was certain he was embarrassed about the intimacy of letting her see all of it, although the dim light may have been a factor as well. It probably would be strange to be showing an alien all your childhood memories. Jaal had a fascination with them— the Milky Way species— that was neither scientific nor political; she supposed that this was his first contact story, the one that went right. Kett were the true first, but the Milky Way aliens were the first to not be total assholes. She’d grown up around other species, but Angara (as they were now, at least) hadn’t been able to explore their system for others before the Kett had come. Had there even been anyone out there to find? “We do,” she said, although she thought that perhaps hers would be disappointing.

She pulled up her omnitool and showed him photos she’d taken: a simulated sunset, a panorama of one of the Citadel’s arms stretched out with an infinite city sprawling before her, a sub shop she liked, a crowd milling around a theatre. She’d wandered around the Citadel for hours, comfortable in knowing that Scott was sequestered in the hotel he and Alec were staying in, already asleep (to be awake early and prepared for his six hundred year sleep). “I took pictures of things I thought I might miss,” she explained. No Alec to try and compartmentalize the experience, no Scott to feign interest. Just her making a record of the life she was forced to leave behind because for some reason she’d still thought that blood was worth something on some fundamental level.

“There are none of your family,” he pointed out, and then: “I’m sorry. Liam told me that it is impolite to mention home life unless someone else did so first.” The look on his face spoke volumes, mostly _how does it get brought up if no one can mention it without being rude?_

“It’s all right.” She stretched out her legs, noticing that he followed her movement with his eyes. It felt a little different than it had when he was new on the ship and trying to make sure she wasn’t a monster. “I was never close with my father, because he was never satisfied with me. He wanted someone malleable and vulnerable— more dependant on him for an example.” She was always doing something wrong, something pointless, something Alec didn’t want her to do because it wasn’t part of his grand plan. “My brother was more than willing to have his entire life mapped out for him, so he was the favourite. Scott and my mother always defended him— _he’s only trying to help, he only wants what’s best, he doesn’t understand how much he upsets you—_ and finally I got sick of it and just… left.” She shrugged and Jaal looked sad. “It was important to me that I did,” she said to alleviate his concern.

“I see. It is only sad that you were driven to that point by people who were meant to support you.” He took her hand on what felt like impulse, gently placing her knuckles against his heart. “It is in line with everything I believe of you: that you are strong and intelligent, and that your beauty is only surpassed by your unshakeable drive and focus.”

What a colour her face must have been, suddenly.

He huffed like he did when he was thinking, and leaned down. The personal bubble didn’t exist for Jaal, which threw off even the most comfortable people. Liam, even, who regularly had no problem with people getting up close and personal, was jarred by Jaal’s tendency to lean in or stand just a _bit_ closer than what you expected. “I’m sorry,” she said, because she was. She admired Angaran openness— lately she’d attempted to follow their example and say what she meant and how she felt without trying to be delicate. “I didn’t mean to ruin the mood.” _What_ mood she meant, even she didn’t know.

“You didn’t,” he told her. “I only wonder if I have been too subtle; I wasn’t sure what would make you uncomfortable and what wouldn’t, so I tried to temper myself. I wish to be direct, now. _Angaran_ direct.”

“Oh?” If he said something about her intelligence or beauty again, she was going to combust.

“I want to kiss you.”

She was going to combust.

“I have for a while,” he added, indifferent to her natural flammability. “The first time I thought so was on Havarl, soon after Voeld. You were standing in the glow of one of the mushrooms while Vetra and I stretched. You looked like you were thinking very deeply, and I thought it was stunning.” He was still holding her hand although she could feel her fingers curling because suddenly touching him seemed very important. “The next was on Aya, when I caught you trying to actually read our commerce laws so you could buy Suvi fruit; you were earnest and trying to be considerate, and the sun was hitting you from an angle that took my breath. There have been a thousand times afterwards, of course, where I have wanted to kiss you; those two stood out.”

“Jaal…” She sounded like he’d sucker punched her rather than spent the good part of a minute being sweet.

“Please, let me finish.” _Stars,_ he wasn’t even done. “It was difficult for me to… accept that I had even befriended you. The Angara have been alone for so long that even if the Milky Way aliens wanted to help, Akksul wasn’t entirely wrong: we have a very long, complicated relationship between our species to look forward to. Caring about you and your crew weakened my potential stance against you, which is a terrible way to begin a friendship. Having other feelings for you as well— it felt even more traitorous. For a while I thought that it cheapened both of our efforts to make our friendship work; it is noble to refuse to take up arms against a friend, but to refuse out of lust? Desire?” He shook his head.

She stayed quiet, although her heart was pounding. Suffice it to say that Alec had not had a round of training that included _emotional clarity and how to make someone feel loved;_ this was new. She liked being on Aya and visiting Angaran settlements because while it could be uncomfortable, it was _delightful_ at the same time to be able to simply say what you mean and not feel the need to encrypt your very _memories_ to avoid letting your child know that you were not a rock.

She liked _Jaal_ because he couldn’t comprehend ever making someone feel like Alec made Amani feel.

“I’ve given it thought, though, and those moments are notable because they were turning points. I saw you as a friend and as something else as well; and slowly I came to realise that I was not resisting the urge to trade in our friendship for physicality. With Allia— the only lover I’ve ever had— our relationship ended entirely once she left me for my brother. We were no longer friends, we knew nothing more of one another; I was loathe to think that I was so consumed by my fascination with you that one day we might become the same, that I was incapable of the balance you would want from me.”

He paused long enough to tilt her face up so he could see her squarely— very kindly ignoring that her eyes were wet because _no one_ had ever made her feel like this, because no one had ever showed such consideration for _her_ as a person with her own feelings— and took her other hand once they were eye-to-eye. “But now I am certain. I want to know you— all of you. I want to learn about the Milky Way through your eyes, and not only because I trust your perspective but because your eyes are beautiful. I want to know what you think of my galaxy, and when I see you staring off into the distance I want you to trust me in turn and share your thoughts. I want to kiss you, Amani Ryder.”

She braced herself, trying to seem more collected than she was, but nothing happened. She opened her eyes and realised that he hadn’t been making a statement: he’d been asking for permission. He hadn’t obligated her to his desires (even if she ultimately shared them), and it was… _everything._ It was everything that Scott and Alec refused to give her to maintain their aloofness. It was everything Ellen hadn’t been willing to give her, because it involved acknowledging that her husband and son weren’t concerned about anyone but themselves. It was everything she’d never been given the opportunity to feel before, and it was Jaal waiting for consent even at the height of this indescribably dizzying feeling.

She didn’t trust herself to respond in full, to try and write him poetry in return, and so she blurted “Yes, please.” He told her that they had all the time in the world— hypocritical, coming from a Resistance soldier— and that he could wait forever, if she wanted to take a moment. “No,” she responded, quickly. “I want to kiss you, too.”

He did all the difficult work of leaning over and pressing their mouths together, but his effort was rewarded when Amani quickly straightened up and moved over— without breaking the kiss— to sit on his lap. She wanted to be close to him, even if she wasn’t entirely sure where to put her hands and his size forced them to compensate a little when she got up close. The kiss itself was an exercise in geometry, with his flat nose and the… neck things she still didn’t have a name for complicating things. He managed, though, with his hands self-consciously on her hips instead of anywhere near her head (which he found terribly fragile without the support and padding of the aforementioned neck things), and his eyes fluttering open every few seconds to make sure she was still all right.

She knew because she kept peeking at him too.

The kiss broke when they accidentally made eye contact and had to mutually pause to laugh nervously, silence falling in a strangely comfortable manner. He leaned back and watched his ceiling, and she fit herself against his side with surprising ease. Time slowed to a crawl, letting the sun set through the window and their breathing even out again. When darkness finally fell completely, Jaal spoke, slowly. “I do have one more thing to show you.”

“Can it wait until I feel like moving again?”

“You’ll like it.” He slid out from under her and moved over to the wall where there was a dial that she assumed controlled the lights. She was proven wrong when a million stars exploded into life around her, planets spinning into their places while she watched on in awe. “As children, Angara are not permitted to learn much about the galaxy; it compromises what few bastions we have left. Kett are certainly aware and after a certain age we must learn where the last of our people are hidden, but the young don’t know. I didn’t know. This is certainly inaccurate, but it is… what I wanted to galaxy to look like, when I found it.”

“How does it hold up?” she asked as he returned to her side, drawing her over and against him again. She went easily, laying down beside him and watching his invented universe tilt and whirl in the ways he’d dreamed of as a child.

“For once, I think I prefer the galaxy we live in,” he answered. She thought so too.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr is here](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com) and yeah idk tbh. anyone else highkey annoyed that the main tags for both ryders include their default name and gender because i happen to find it very very very fucking obnoxious.


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